Immigration newsletter 19 Apr 2006

An IBM study is predicting that the city of London will become an even more important global centre for commerce and finance by the year 2015. Talent will be lured away from the US due to its restrictive regulations. US executives will leave the US to escape financial disclosure rules. UK's hedge funds will attract skilled mathematicians and actuaries from Eastern Europe.London will benefit from an influx of hard working and highly skilled immigrants with financial and actuarial skills. The increased competition for jobs in the financial sector will mean a reduction in labour costs. 

At the same time there will be a transfer of labour abroad, as back office work will be outsourced to Eastern Europe. The savings from outsourcing will mean increased profitability and greater investment in the UK. London's growing importance as a global financial centre will also mean increased pressure for deregulation in Europe's other financial centres, the IBM report for Business Value and The Economist Intelligence Unit stated. 

The whole story can be read in our news section.

Scramble for scarce H-1B visas in the US 

Overshadowed in the US debate on illegal immigration reforms, is the Senate's decision on next year's cap on H-1B visas. Many companies are demanding that Senators increase the number of H-1B visas so to off-set the shortages in the labour market, especially in the IT sector. Many companies have had to resort to outsourcing and opening software design centres in countries such as India and Europe to compensate for labour shortages in the US. Martin Singer president at PCTel Inc, says he can't fill jobs at the company because of restrictions on bringing in foreign high-tech workers. The Chicago based maker of equipment and software for wireless communication could easily double the number of visa-holding employees if it could get them, he says. We had no choice but to open a software design centre in India, said Singer. 

"The tech industry is abuzz over the scarcity of the H-1B visas. It's just incredibly stupid that a country that used to encourage technically talented people, is now shunning those resources when we have a shortage of these skilled people," said Singer. 

Susan Fuller, vice-president at Revere Group, campares the current labour shortages to the hiring scramble of 1990s. Revere Group once balked at shelling out $5,000 to sponsor a visa holder or $10,000 for a green card, but now sees it is a neccesity to import skilled IT specialists from overseas said Fuller.